Photography Pulitzer for Coverage of Refugee Crisis

Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Photography Pulitzer for Coverage of Refugee Crisis

By David Gonzalez and James EstrinApr. 18, 2016Apr. 18, 2016

The New York Times and Thomson Reuters shared the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for coverage of Europe’s refugee crisis. The Times’s team was comprised of Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter. This is the newspaper’s fourth photo Pulitzer in the past three years.

The prize for feature photography was awarded to Jessica Rinaldi of the Boston Globe “for the raw and revealing photographic story of a boy who strives to find his footing after abuse by those he trusted.”

At the heart of the Times’s entry were Mr. Ponomarev’s and Mr. Lima’s photographs of a Syrian refugee family’s trek from Greece to Sweden, where they applied for asylum. Mr. Ponomarev photographed the first part of the Majid family’s journey through Macedonia to Serbia, while Mr. Lima followed them from Belgrade, Serbia, to Trelleborg, Sweden. In total, the photographers accompanied them for 40 days by train, bus and boat, but most often on foot.

Michele McNally, an assistant managing editor and director of photography at the Times, said the award was a reaffirmation of the newspaper’s commitment to photography, especially on complicated and quick-moving global stories. “I’ve been a photo editor for a long time, and this story is important to me because it affects the entire world: America, Europe and the Middle East,” she said. “It affects everyone, including you and me.”

Photography Pulitzer: Thomson Reuters Coverage of Migrant Crisis

Credit Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

David Furst, the Times’s international picture editor, assigned the photographers and shepherded the newspaper’s visual coverage. “What makes this entry so important is it really gives the full arc of mass migration and also shows the individual suffering,” he said. “These photographers deserve a tremendous amount of credit. They are talented photographers invested for significant periods of time making images that matter. We’re really proud of them.”

Ms. McNally added that the team Mr. Furst assembled was uniquely suited to cover a crisis that had dominated the news and attracted thousands of reporters. “There are so many interpretations of the refugee crisis,” she said. “The different backgrounds of the photographers, I think, contributed to the success of the coverage. We have a Russian, a Brazilian, an American and a German.”

Mr. Ponomarev, who is based in Moscow, spent five months on the migration story. He said the flood of humanity looked like a Biblical exodus. The effects of this migration, he said, will be felt for decades.

“The travel part is just the beginning,” he said. “I want to follow this to the end. I want to cover what comes next, the political and social changes that this exodus will cause.”

Mr. Lima had already started on that aspect: He was in the Swedish countryside with the Majid family, playing with the children — who have come to call him “Uncle” — when he got word of the prize. He broke down in tears, as he thought about the ordeal the Majids had endured.

“Theirs is probably the greatest experience of perseverance and commitment I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Lima, who is from Brazil, said. “They did the journey on their own from Syria to Sweden, crossing eight or nine borders at a time when there was no volunteer help for them. Jamila was pregnant but she never complained, and the children were very strong. Their spirit and their hospitality to have us among them really impressed me.”

Although Mr. Etter spent only two days on assignment, his image of a tearful man cradling a child as their packed rubber boat arrived in Greece was indelible. The photo soon went viral on social media.

“It was quite overwhelming to see their joy and the release of the fear they had been feeling,” Mr. Etter, who was born in Germany and lives in Barcelona, said. “You take so many photos and most pretty much go unnoticed,” he said. “The reaction this photo triggered was overwhelming.”

Mr. Hicks, a staff photographer for The Times, spent several weeks covering the refugees as they arrived in Lesbos. His long experience covering the conflicts in the countries that the refugees were fleeing gave him a keen appreciation of the desperation that fueled their journey, as well as the joy they felt to find safe haven.

“It says something about the fear and control they live under in those countries,” Mr. Hicks said. “It was emotional for me to see those people come, and to be able to identify with some of the trauma they lived.”

This is Mr. Hicks’s third Pulitzer: He won in 2014 for his photos of the terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall. Previously, he was among the New York Times staff members who shared the 2009 prize for International Reporting for coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Tyler can shoot the most aesthetic, memorable and meaningful pictures in any situation,” Ms. McNally said. “Even under fire.”

Thomson Reuters chief photographer for Greece and Cyprus, Yannis Behrakis, led their coverage and contributed eight of the 17 photographs in the winning entry.

“We showed the world what was going on, and the world cared. It showed that humanity is still alive,” Behrakis said. “We made for these unfortunate people’s voice to be heard. Now with a Pulitzer, we feel that our work has been professionally recognized.”

Ms. Rinaldi’s story “The Life and Times of Strider Wolf,” was about a child whose life was marked by abuse and hardship, from beatings to eviction. In the paper’s submission letter for the prize, the Globe’s editor said “Strider had a simple and abiding wish: to be loved.” Ms. Rinaldi and reporter Sarah Schweitzer repeatedly visited the child and his relatives in Maine, spending days form dawn to dusk with them, gaining their trust. The story — with its hope to see if this child would break free of misfortune — struck a powerful chord with readers and led to donations and a trust fund for the family.

Pulitzer for Feature Photography, Jessica Rinaldi

Credit Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe, via Associated Press

“This story is about more than one family,” the Globe wrote in its letter. “It is a devastating and uniquely revealing portrait of poverty and the power of trauma to transcend generations. It is also, ultimately, a beautiful, complex and painful story about the yearnings of the human spirit.” Ms. Rinaldi was also a finalist this year in the feature photography category for images of a heroin addict’s struggles in East Boston.

Ms. Rinaldi learned of her Pulitzer while driving a rental car in Atlanta after covering a practice of The Boston Celtics before tomorrow’s playoff game. She almost drove off the road when Bill Greene, the Globe’s director of photography, called with the news, she said. It was, to her, a validation of months of effort on a challenging story.

“I learned that if you tell a story with a lot of heart and subtlety in a way that can really grab people, that people will respond,” Ms. Rinaldi 36, said.

“Sometimes we can get discouraged about what the outcome of our work can be, but this proves that photography can make a difference.”